It would be really nice if we had some new music out. We’re so slow at doing stuff. That’s just part of our thing. People used to blame it on Mutt Lange, but that’s not it at all. He’s done about four albums in the time it takes us to do three songs. You know what I mean? So we can’t really use that excuse anymore. (laughing) He’s fantastic. I actually saw him recently and we played together and worked together on a song, and it was killer. But I think that for Def Leppard, it would be really nice if we got some new music out. We’re painfully slow. We have issues. We love each other—it’s not that—but we’re in different parts of the world and for some reason, it takes us a long time. It’s weird.

You’re dipping back into the catalog for the upcoming Hysteria residency in Vegas, where you’re going to play the entire album. How did that all come together?

Funny enough, it was the promoters. (After locking in the residency,) we said, “Oh, we’re going to re-learn Pyromania and learn High and Dry…” But the promoter said, “We want Hysteria. We want you to come and play Hysteria in Vegas.” We thought, “OK, fine,” because we were trying to figure out what we wanted it to be and we were trying to split (the setlist) up, but they were very adamant, saying “Everybody wants to hear Hysteria. That’s the one.”

You mentioned Mutt earlier, whose production techniques typically require eye-watering heights of precision. What has it been like translating the album versions from Hysteria into the live format for the residency?

Well, we’ve yet to find this out. It’s not until next March and April. Me, Rick and Vivian rehearsed some of the songs up in L.A. a couple weeks ago and it was fairly shocking, because a lot of the songs we do, like Love Bites and Pour Some Sugar on Me… Seven songs we actually do already, but it’s the four that we don’t. I was listening and trying to sing while playing the guitar at the same time, and it’s like, “Whoa..” But it’s great. It was actually really cool. It was inspiring because they’re such great songs and I’d forgotten that. Mutt used to say, “Try this,” and you’d say, “Why are you making me play this? This is so difficult!” but then you’d hear it back and you’d go, “Wow, that sounds really cool.” So it’s never gratuitous with him. Even the harmonies and stuff—there’s always a place for them. It sounds really simple but a lot of it is really quite complicated.